bazyar@ernie (Jawaid Bazyar) (03/22/91)
In article <246.27e77efe@mwk.uucp> tway@mwk.uucp (Bill Tway) writes: > > INSTRUCTIONS > ============ >Follow these instructions EXACTLY, and in 20 to 60 days you >will have received well over $50,000.00 cash, all yours. >This program has remained successful because of the honesty >and integrety of the participants. Please continue its >success by carefully adhering to the instructions. Uh huh. Folks, you're making a mailing list for the guy at the TOP OF THE PYRAMID, he's making bucks and you're getting rooked. These scame have been flowing over the net with concerning regularity lately- I wish there was a way to accurately track down and terminate everyone who posts these scams. -- Jawaid Bazyar |"I'm sure K&R have never heard of Mike." Senior/Computer Engineering | bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu |"That's okay. I'm sure Mike's never heard of K&R". Apple II Forever! | (discussion about Orca/C)
jdd@db.toronto.edu (John DiMarco) (03/22/91)
tway@mwk.uucp (Bill Tway) writes: > > INSTRUCTIONS > ============ >Follow these instructions EXACTLY, and in 20 to 60 days you >will have received well over $50,000.00 cash, all yours. >This program has remained successful because of the honesty >and integrety of the participants. Please continue its >success by carefully adhering to the instructions. This is an extremely slimy scam, usually known as a pyramid scheme. Consider what he's asking you to do: - give 1 dollar to five different people, sight unseen. - donate your name and address to countless (junk) mailing lists. Now consider what he's offering you: - an opportunity to scam lots of other people the same way. If you think that the scam will work as well for you as it will work for the person at the top of the list, think again. Let's suppose you fall for the scam, and follow the instructions exactly. You send off your 5x$1, then post the message to 10 BBS's with your name in spot 10. Then suppose only one person for each BBS falls for the scam, responds to the message, and makes 10 postings to 10 different BBS's each, with your name in spot 9. Note that this posting has already hit 100 BBS's at this stage. Continuing the process, 1000 BBS's will see the posting with your name in spot 8, 10000 BBS's will see the posting with your name in spot 7, 100000 BBS's will see the posting with your name in spot 6, and 1 million BBS's will see the posting with your name in spot 5. Only then will you start receiving money. By this time, over 1.1 million BBS's have seen some variant of the message *you* posted. Now consider all the other people responding to this fellow's posting to this and quite possibly many other newsgroups. Now think: how many BBS's are there in the world? One hundred thousand? Probably many fewer than that. Now tell me: are you going to get *any* money from this scheme if you follow the instructions? In all probability, not a cent. The only people who will benefit from this scheme are those at the top of the list. If you were a con artist who wanted to make some money through such a scheme, you'd get a few friends (or aliases!) together, write up a list, make up a few fake testimonial letters and pass the result around. You sit back and rake in the cash, while all the gullible folk you're swindling rush around doing all the dirty work for you. By the time they get their turn to collect the promised cash, the "market" of gullible folk is saturated. That's why there are all sorts of laws, in both Canada and the US, outlawing pyramid schemes. This, by the way, has nothing to do with Apple IIs. I post it here in the hope of dissuading anyone from wasting money and effort in order to benefit swindlers. John -- John DiMarco jdd@db.toronto.edu or jdd@db.utoronto.ca University of Toronto, CSRI BITNET: jdd%db.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net (416) 978-8609 UUCP: uunet!utai!db!jdd
taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) (03/22/91)
Now there's one reason why I sometimes wish comp.sys.apple2 was a moderated newsgroup. Did this guy (Bill Tway) just walk in and send his "easy money" message here? How many other newsgroups has he hit? A few days ago, a local user uploaded some text file to a Macintosh BBS in Toronto, and I suspect it is the exact same letter. It's just another variation of a mail pyramid scam. Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't."
daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David H. Huang) (03/22/91)
Gak! Not here! -- David Huang | "Calzoni Pizza: Internet: daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | Delivery in six UUCP: ..!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!daveh | hours, or else your America Online: DrWho29 | pizza is cold."
glenn@SLOTH.NCSL.NIST.GOV (K. Robert Glenn) (03/22/91)
> > Uh huh. Folks, you're making a mailing list for the guy at the TOP OF THE >PYRAMID, he's making bucks and you're getting rooked. > These scame have been flowing over the net with concerning regularity >lately- I wish there was a way to accurately track down and terminate >everyone who posts these scams. > >-- >Jawaid Bazyar |"I'm sure K&R have never heard of Mike." I have to agree, isn't it illegal to use the internet for profit. This kind of thing has *nothing* to do with apple computer and should *NOT* be tolerated on this or any other internet mailing list. It takes alot to really upset me, but this kind of con-artist scam has a tendancy to push me over the edge!!! Maybe we could use a tactical-worm that will trace all the senders of such messages and remove all their accounts. Rob G. glenn@osi.ncsl.nist.gov
gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (03/23/91)
In article <1991Mar21.164850.15625@m.cs.uiuc.edu> bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar) writes: -In article <246.27e77efe@mwk.uucp> tway@mwk.uucp (Bill Tway) writes: ->Follow these instructions EXACTLY, and in 20 to 60 days you ->will have received well over $50,000.00 cash, all yours. - Uh huh. Folks, you're making a mailing list for the guy at the TOP OF THE -PYRAMID, he's making bucks and you're getting rooked. - These scame have been flowing over the net with concerning regularity -lately- I wish there was a way to accurately track down and terminate -everyone who posts these scams. Indeed, that is a classic example of a "pyramid" scheme, and it is HIGHLY ILLEGAL, at least when it uses the US mails. I suspect that the same is true in spades for such use of the DoD Internet facilities. Participants in such schemes risk being the object of criminal prosecution.
MQUINN@UTCVM.BITNET (03/23/91)
On Fri, 22 Mar 91 22:06:06 GMT Doug Gwyn said: > >Indeed, that is a classic example of a "pyramid" scheme, and it is HIGHLY >ILLEGAL, at least when it uses the US mails. I suspect that the same is >true in spades for such use of the DoD Internet facilities. Participants >in such schemes risk being the object of criminal prosecution. A year or two ago, one of our local news stations did a story on pyramid scams. According to them, it's HIGHLY illegal, regardless of how you advertise it... even word of mouth. What was happenning here, in Chattanooga, was that some people were doing a scam called the 'airplane'. One person starts a fictitious airplane. This person is called the pilot. He then gets to co-pilots and they each get two crew helpers, who each get two passengers, who each get to pieces of luggage. Everyone pays the pilot a certain amount of money (in this case, it was like $5000). So the pilot takes off with $155,000. Then he leaves. Each person in the pyramid moves up one rank. Each co-pilot becoms a pilot of their own plane (two planes now). Then, each passenger (previously ranked as luggage) must find 2 new peices of luggage. The new luggage each pays their share to the pilot Then everyone moves up another notch in the ranking system and the two planes divide into four planes, and so on. You don't get paid until you are pilot, IF you ever get that far. The planes usually crash very soon after they take off (the chain breaks up and people don't get new luggage) and everyone who has not made it to pilot yet loses their money. Also, it doesn't take long for their to be more people that have 'theoretically' played, than there are people in the world! The local police cracked the game and arrested everyone who participated (who were all middle to high class citizens). I think I'll stop here, 'cause this has nothing to do with Apple II's, but I'd like to hear what happens to that jerk that posted in our group if anyone finds out. ---------------------------------------- Michael J. Quinn University of Tennessee at Chattanooga BITNET-- mquinn@utcvm <------------send files here pro-line-- mquinn@pro-gsplus.cts.com